Lee Odden from Top Rank Blog joins us for episode #45 of Inbound Now TV.

We dive into what optimization really means to Lee and how to take a holistic approach to online marketing by continuously iterating on processes. Lee also shares why taking customer-centric approach to your business is critical.

Watch the episode to learn:

• How to get into an optimization state of mind
• Why KPIs, Goals, and Benchmarks are important and how to set them
• How to turn insights into marketing personas
• How Top Rank leverages their content to educate buyers and win clients
• and how Lee cranks out compelling content on a consistent basis

Show Notes

The consumer buying cycle is not a one-way path.

The idea that shoppers only use google to find and buy products is one-sided.  Social media plays an increasingly bigger piece as time goes on.

Developing a Customer Persona

Egocentric content works only to an extent. People don't want to share and consume your website pages about blue and green widgets.

What journey does the customer take in the process of researching your products and deeper into the purchasing process.

How to gain insights?

Hire an inbound agency :)

Bring in your current customers into a social media aggregation service to cross-reference what sites they are active on, and dive in from there.

Have a characterization of who your best customers are and also who your worst customers are.

Developing personas is an ongoing process that requires re-visitation and refinement over time. Optimization if you will.

Top Rank's Content Strategy

Lee has a fixed content plan that is flexible for wildcats posts.

"Educating them through their journey"

How to compensate for SSL keywords  issues

1. Have a keyword map of all of the keywords you want to focus on with your content.
2. Use historical data and look for patterns.
3. Clustering pages together based off of your keyword map and look at the traffic levels going to each page.
4. Look in google webmaster tools to see those keywords to see what the impressions look like.

Blogging Tips from Lee Odden

Lee has written several thousand blog posts over the years, and I consider him one of the greats! He suggests, thinking about what your target audience cares about and building a solid editorial calendar.

Be socially active with other blogs in your industry, you can leverage relationships to grow your blogs authority quickly if you play your cards right.

Tap into the never ending stream of ideas from community engagement.

Lees blog is one of main ways he gets the word out their about his companies services.

Try and get others on board contributing to your blog. We do this at inbound now with our guest author page.

People will work for a living but DIE for recognition. Find out a way to recognize those who deserve it.

Connect with Lee

You can find lee online at his blog Toprankblog.com and on Twitter @LeeOdden.

Make sure to check out his book Optimize - How to Attract & Engage More Customers With Integrated SEO, Social Media & Content Marketing!